Night at The Abbey

SFL provides d&b audio system to deliver pristine audio for a large gathering at St Alban’s Cathedral for over 2,500 young people.

Managing the full technical production for the event, SFL had to work around the cathedral’s busy service schedule including Morning Prayer, Eucharist and Evensong. There was also an overflow venue that needed additional technical support including video and audio relay.

This tight get in coupled with the packed venue meant it was important to have an lightweight, easy to setup PA, extensive remote control and sufficient headroom to provide enough power for the full band set as well as speech intelligibility.

To work with the inherent acoustics of a Cathedral, a distributed d&b point source PA system was deployed. This had the key effect of keeping the direct to reverberant sound at a good ratio for the listener. This kept the fidelity of the strings and acoustic instruments to a maximum while retaining headroom for the praise and celebration sets.

The main PA saw Y10P with V-Sub go in at stage, which gave a full range PA system with enough low end for the tracks. V-Sub was a great choice for the venue because the cardioid nature of the subs kept spill onto stage to a minimum, reducing low end build up from the cathedral’s acoustics. Y10P gave fantastic headroom and was light enough to get high on tall stands to reduce the SPL gradient effect of level falling off with distance. The Y series gives horizontal directivity control down to 500 Hz which is especially beneficial in reverberant or acoustically challenging environments such as St Alban’s Cathedral.

d&b’s simple rigging – the swivel bracket allowed quick and easy rigging, allowing the PA to be put up in a matter of minutes. The Mix Top/Sub mode of the amplifiers allowed us to keep cabling neat as only 1 cable had to be run to each main PA side, which helps in a venue of such grandeur.

In order to keep the direct-to-diffuse ratio to a maximum, 4 sets of delays were placed down the cathedral at each supporting pillar. Thanks to the unobtrusive cabinet design and compact dimensions, the footprint of each delay was very small, allowing a greater seated capacity. d&b T10 were chosen for their high power and exemplary directivity performance – when in point source mode (as they have a rotatable horn, they can function as part of a line array or as a stand-alone point source), they have 90° horizontal and 35° vertical directivity patterns, excellent for wide coverage but minimising reflections from the ceiling. This made them ideal delay speakers.

Using two quad-D12 amplifier racks allowed us to have finite control over the delay times for each delay set, and provided all the power we needed in 2 compact racks. Thanks to d&b’s proprietary control system over CAN bus, the R1 software allowed us to manage amplifiers, monitor levels and tune the system without having to access the amplifier racks. This is especially useful in a full cathedral where quick access is not immediately available.

To provide some extra coverage at the front, E8 speakers were used to fill the front rows. Again, due to their wide dispersion (90° H x 50° V) and coaxial driver design, they excelled at front-fill duty. In the overflow venue, a separate Y7P/V-Sub system was employed – thanks to the efficiency of the d&b ecosystem of products, the amplifier and speakers ran on minimal power and provided effortless headroom.

The event was a great success, which saw people empowered and uplifted and was a fantastic one-off night for Soul Survivor in the Cathedral. d&b provided the power and acoustic fidelity needed for a full band that included strings and piano, while maintaining dispersion control which kept the excitation of the reverberant field to a minimum. d&b products continue to excel and become part of the solution to challenging venues and spaces across the UK.
Photo credits Tundun Obidipe & Jez Godlonton